Sex & Secrecy: The 4th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture & Society (IASSCS)

July 3, 2003

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Sex, secrecy and others
Last week Johannesburg, South Africa, was home to a conference on sex and secrecy that was hosted by The University of Witwatersrand. The event was widely hailed as a huge success, from an organisational point of view and also from an academic one - it was, however, not without its controversies.

The problem with reporting on conferences is that one can never achieve an overall perspective, so many of the sessions run concurrently that one misses more than one catches and any one person's experience of the conference will be widely different from any other person's. Each morning of the three day conference involved a plenary session bringing all the delegates together and there was one final wrap up session at the end, but most of what went on at this conference, as with all such gatherings, went on in the corridors, lunch breaks and at social functions - for it is here that a general sense of the opinion of delegates can be ascertained. There can be no doubt that everyone who attended this conference has left Johannesburg with a good impression. The conference was stimulating, well organised and diverse, and has, no doubt done much to bolster the reputation of, not just the University, but also the city as a whole.

Othering
As an example of how diverse individual's experiences can be of such conferences however, in the wrap up session one academic complained that he had not found enough about researcher's methodology in the presentations and yet in most of the sessions I had attended explanations of methodology often clouded discussion of the topics themselves. But this may also be an illustration the differing needs and expectations of academics as opposed to NGO "types" who also attended the conference.

The IASSCS has always made an effort to bring together people working in NGOs, those in the field so to speak, and academics who study sexuality and society. It is a commendable policy - not only does it create a sense of usefulness but also of diversity - different disciplines of academia are represented and different fields of community work. Exchanges between these arenas were facilitated through discussion sessions and a concerted effort to make networking an important component of the conference. The intrinsic problem with academics verses NGOs is that for one group the presentation of a paper is the end of their (often months or years of) research, while for those hearing it (invariably NGO representatives) it is the beginning of the process. If any criticism can be made at all of the exchange, it is that NGO people are still being invited into the world of the academics - they are still the guests or outsiders, and as they are so often the source, or even subject of the research, they are still made to feel like outsiders - or "others" as became popular to claim. It is perhaps a problem of methodology, or digestion, as I like to call it.

Time constraints mean that once papers were presented there was very little time for responses, questions or discussion there and then. For academics and researches any disagreement with the presenter can be addressed by producing an opposing paper to be presented at the next conference - for others, there is no such opportunity. NGO types like to workshop, discuss and internalise new information in a very different way to academics and so those who identify with the NGO category left many sessions feeling disallowed. How much better it would be for those people, myself included, to have a day of workshops and discussions where new topics raised at the conference could be digested.

African lesbians
Perhaps the most exciting and successful of the presentations, all agreed, was the Women's Same Sex Forum which brought together lesbians from around Africa to present on the lives of lesbians in their various countries. The presentations were real and revealing - appealed to academics and to NGO people and created solid outcomes. One of the most important observations I took away from these sessions was that there is not one generic "problem" for lesbians in Africa. Different countries present different problems for the women living there.

Apart from being the most enthralling sessions, the project also assisted with skills development and had been developed over a period of several months. GALA (Gay and Lesbian Archive) at the University had trained the participants in research methodology and presentation techniques and so facilitated bringing non-academics into the realm of the conference on an equal standing. What is more the women involved in the project have now formed an African Lesbian Network which will be administered from Namibia. The true spirit of the policy of integrating academics and individuals from the community was brought to the process and succeeded on every level.

Mozambican drag queens
One of the controversies of the conference also involved the topic of "othering". An exhibition of photographs by a Danish photographer living in Maputo was displayed in the conference foyer. Some of the images showed nakedness, all of the subjects were drawn from a community of drag queens that the photographer had become involved with while in Maputo. The objection to the photographs was not the nature of the image - of the nakedness - but that all the subjects were black and that no parallel exhibition that objectified white sexuality was include in the conference.

The objection had more to do with a perceived racism - that white people are still studying black sexuality and not white sexuality and are thereby speaking for black people - that in its self being an imperialist approach.

Whatever side of the argument one stood on, the debate was opened and the exhibition remained up. There were no losers and no winners ultimately. But as much as it was a criticism of white academics "othering" the subjects of their research it was also a call to black researchers to engage in self-study and thereby speak to the subject of black sexuality from within. The only problem with that is that white researchers studying white sexuality would never admit to that being an internalised study - the whole point of this kind of research is that the researcher has to strike a balance between becoming close to the subject while remaining outside of it and as far as possible not changing it as a result of the study. Academics themselves engage in a process of self-alienation, self-othering in order to do what they do.

Other themes - perhaps for the future?
One thing it seems, that academics cannot resist doing is turning themes around to suit their own needs and fields of study. In the plenary sessions there were occasions when presenters touched on sex and secrecy as their topic but often discussed the two quite separately - going more often into the subject of the secret more than into that of sex and the secrecy surrounding it. In the closing session there was a suggestion made that a possible future them could be Sex and Publicity - how sex now pervades our societies and public debate.

However, during this conference other themes emerged that were not fully explored. On more than one occasion ideas of colonialism and how it has altered sexualities came up. Also, the power dynamics within sex and how colonialism exerted power through control of sexual activity. What a disappointment then that no reference was made to the contemporary African leadership's perceptions of sexuality, sexual identity and sexual orientation - we were still discussing colonialism as an historic occurrence and not as a contemporary issue. Similarly one session I attended included papers, which looked at racism in the gay communities of San Francisco and towards Aboriginal people in Australia.

Race and sex, the nature of racism in a sexual context - these are themes rich in possibility and extremely relevant in South Africa and I, as well as others I met, felt that more emphasis could have been made of these issues as a sub theme for the conference.

The next conference, in two years time, will be held in the USA - as this is also a country where racism, and in fact the denial of racism, is such a huge issue - perhaps these ideas could be expanded upon. Not only racism and contemporary perceptions of colonialism but also the concept of white on white and black on black research - what that means and what it achieves. Whatever decision is made about the future themes there are endless possibilities for research and for approach - including let us not forget, that sex is not merely a dry academic subject but also a living breathing reality even at the conference and that somehow discussion of sex should not exclude personal perspectives and experiences of sex.

Researchers do have sex - how does their personal experience influence the outcomes or direction of research? A lot could be achieved I feel by bringing academics a little into the world of the NGO types - perhaps a little "touchy feely" workshop sharing session would be both enlightening and enjoyable and help bridge the gap - make human the researcher; ask only of them what they regularly ask of their subjects.

- Behind The Mask 

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